Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and today looks like a cool, cloudy day. Expect highs in the mid 50s with a chance for rain late this evening, and, while the 10-day forecast doesn’t hold any temperatures in the 80s, I do see some upper 60s / low 70s in our future.
 

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The results of yesterday’s firehouse primary for the (old) 9th Senate District seat are in, and Del. Lamont Bagby won with a commanding 72% of the vote. Alexsis Rodgers and Del. Dawn Adams rounded out the rest of the ballot with 21% and 7%, respectively. According to WRIC, Bagby will face Republican Stephen Imholt in the March 28th special election. Imholt has an incredibly up-hill battle ahead of him. The new Senate District representing Richmond is pretty compact, extremely Democratic, and unlikely to elect a Republican. It sounds exhausting to run a campaign for a seat that will only exist for a couple of months, especially when the new district that seat represents voted 76–20 for McAuliffe in the last gubernatorial election.
 

City Council will host their first budget work session of the 2023 season today at 2:00 PM! They’ll focus exclusively on setting priorities—both for the operating and the capital budgets. That means this afternoon is a great time to tune in, take a few notes, and hear about the City’s needs through Council’s lens. Remember, the Mayor creates the first draft of the budget, and while City Council can adjust it in whatever way they like, they’ve got to find the votes to make that happen. I can’t even remember a time when Council proposed and passed even moderately-sized changes to the Mayor’s budget—someone correct me if I’m wrong though. Then, after budget chats, we’ve got the the informal and formal City Council meetings, with light agendas of their own. The Regular Agenda is completely empty, and the two papers I’m watching have both been continued (RES. 2023-R011 and ORD. 2022–375).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and you can expect the day to warm up just a bit by this afternoon. Tomorrow, though, temperatures sink like a stone with lows near freezing and highs 20 degrees cooler than today—plus some rain, too. Wild! Megan Wise at NBC12 reports that yesterday’s high hit 83 °F, obliterating the all-time daily high and tying the all-time overall high for February set back in the 30s.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 65, 92, and 38, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 10.4. First, these numbers don’t scream “data issues” to me like they have for the past two weeks. Second, I think next week we might officially dip back into the cool, green waters of a low COVID-19 Community Level. While we wait for that, wash your hands for 30 seconds and read Katelyn Jetelina’s piece on this year’s norovirus season.
 

OK! We now have voting locations for this coming Sunday’s special election to fill Jennifer McClellan’s now vacant State Senate seat. Important note: You can vote in this weekend’s election if you live in the old 9th Senate District, aka Jennifer McClellan previously represented you in the Senate. If you’ve been redistricted into the new 9th Senate District from elsewhere you’ll have to sit this one out. It’s confusing, but, luckily, you can use this Who’s My Legislator tool to find both your old and new districts. If you’re a big fan of voting in elections, get excited because primaries for alllll of the General Assembly seats kick off this summer ahead of a very big and very important November election.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F right now (before the sun comes up) and today’s high will top out somewhere in the mid 80s. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says (Twitter), “We’re going to SMASH Today’s record of 75°. It won’t even be close. And probably will get to the all-time February record of 83°, which happened twice in the early 1930s.” Things do cool off in a big way tomorrow, but today looks like an absolute stunner. Enjoy!
 

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Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that RPS Chief of Staff, Michelle Hudascko has resigned. To quote a bit from Hudascko’s resignation letter: “…the hostile and toxic work environment that some members of the RPS School Board have created and actively perpetuate on a daily basis is a deep disservice to RPS students and families…The frequent actions that some Board Members take to dismantle progress and intentionally set the Administration up to fail, along with the mean-spirited personal attacks, threats, and unfounded accusations have made doing this work nearly impossible. Our students are the ones paying the price.” I couldn’t agree more, and it’s not like Hudascko is an outlier, either. Tyler Lane at WTVR put together the list of recent high-level resignations which include: Chief Operating Officer, Chief Academic Officer, and the Director of Safety and Security. In a pretty clear sign of their brokenness and dysfunction, the RPS Board couldn’t come to consensus on a statement for media.
 

Alright, it’s election dominos time! Now that Representative-elect McClellan is off to Washington, we need to go through another whole round of primaries and special elections to fill her State Senate seat. Sen. Louise Lucas has set March 28th as the special election date, and the Democratic Party of Virginia has set February 26—this Sunday!—as the primary election date. Candidates have until 7:00 PM tomorrow to declare—stressful! At this point, I know we’ll see Alexsis Rodgers, Lamont Bagby, and Dawn Adams on the ballot, but, even with the incredibly short timelines, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more names pop up over the next 36 hours. Voting locations to come, stay tuned, and make a plan to vote!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 60s—chilly, really, when compared to tomorrow’s potentially record-breaking temperatures. But that’s tomorrow! For today, enjoy warmer-than-average temperatures that don’t induce existential dread.
 

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She did it! With a landslide 74% of the vote, Jennifer McClellan will be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress! NBCNews’s Ryan Nobles says (Twitter) she joins the Jennifers Wexton and Kiggans as part of the Commonwealth’s Jennifer Delegation—the only Jennifers in the country to represent a state in the House. Exciting stuff—both for McClellan and for us, who now continue to have excellent elected representation at the federal level. You can read McClellan’s victory speech here.
 

City Council’s Governmental Operations committee meets today (full agenda here) and will consider one paper of note: RES. 2023-R011. This resolution asks the City and its attorney to start figuring out how to acquire Evergreen and East End Cemetery from the now defunct EnRichmond Foundation. Years ago, the City gifted these two historically Black cemeteries to the Foundation. Ostensibly they did so for maintenance and upkeep reasons, but the relationship between EnRichmond and the long-operating Friends of East End group (who’d been maintenancing and upkeeping on their own for quite a while) has, from the beginning, been fraught to say the least. Returning the properties to City ownership seems like the right first step, and formalizing some agreement with and support for the Friends of East End to continue their work seems like a solid next step.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today looks great. You can expect sunshine and highs right around 70 °F. Temperatures later this week might even climb into the 80s, which sounds wonderful (unless you’re a fruit tree who’s sure to be ruined by an inevitable March deep freeze (Twitter)).
 

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It’s Election Day in Virginia’s 4th Congressional District! If you haven’t yet voted through one of the Commonwealth’s many early voting mechanisms (thank you, Democrats!), you can still head to your standard polling place and cast a ballot in person. Heck, you can even register to vote today and cast a provisional ballot. Amazing!You’ve got no excuses, so get out there and vote!
 

Related: Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Del. Jeff Bourne will “not seek re-election in the new 78th House District or join an already crowded Democratic field of contenders to represent the new 14th Senate District.” Bourne has been a staple in Richmond politics since he got elected to school board a bunch of years ago, and it’ll be weird not having him around. Tap through for the tiniest bit of speculation on Bourne’s next political moves, but I think we’ll probably just have to wait and see to know anything meaningful.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and that’s about today’s high. You can expect rain throughout most of the day and then falling temperatures this evening. The long weekend ahead of us looks dry and cool (but still a little too warm for February), and I hope you find the time either to sit quietly and enjoy the ambient sounds of your neighborhood or to catch up on your favorite plot-driven zombie show.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 15, 133, and 98, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 12.9. Again this week we have a case rate in Richmond that’s an order of magnitude smaller than rates in the surrounding counties, and again I’m not really sure what to make of it. 15 is certainly more believable than “zero”, which was Richmond’s number last week, so that’s something. If you zoom out a bit on the CDC’s COVID-19 map, you’ll see almost the entire country washed in the pleasant green of a low Community Level—maybe that’ll be our future in Central Virginia soon! In the meantime, as we wait for that green, read this piece from Your Local Epidemiologist’s Katelyn Jetelina about the real science behind the fungal zombies in The Last of Us.
 

Jahd Khalil at VPM has an exciting report that the City has hired a Labor Relations Administrator and that three buckets of city employees have filed for union elections. The collective bargaining enabling legislation passed last year allows five separate groups of employees to join a union, and, yesterday, workers in the Administrative and Technical unit, Professionals unit, and Labor and Trades unit all voted to do so. This is great news, and, while it took a little longer than expected, I’m glad to see the City make progress on this promise.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and today, the 16th of February, you can expect highs in the mid 70s. Seems warm, a little…too warm. In fact, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we could even get close to catching the all-time high of 78 °F (Twitter). Get out there and enjoy it today, because rain moves in tomorrow and brings with it cooler temperatures (but still not what I’d consider “winter weather”).
 

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As the General Assembly session winds down, Kim Bobo, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, has a look at three bills that “were killed (or appear dead)” and a nice reflection on public policy advocacy in Virginia. I liked this bit, which tells you why contacting your legislators is so important, even when your priorities don’t seem like they have any legislative hope at all: “Even though we may not see all the fruits of our labor this season, our work is not in vain. We are building the support and understanding on these and other issues, which is needed to advance them down the line. Next year is not an election year. The session will be longer. And we are long-distance runners, not sprinters.”
 

A while back, the Capital Region Land Conservancy bought a piece of property down by Great Shiplock Park from private owners, finally connecting some of the downriver parts of our riverfront. One of the benefits of this transaction, other than fulfilling some of the goals set out in Richmond’s Riverfront Plan, is that it allows for rerouting the Capital Trail off of horrible Dock Street and over somewhere closer to the river (and away from traffic). Cat Anthony, the executive director of the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation, has some new-to-me timing-news in their most recent email newsletter: “It has been exciting to learn more about the James River Association’s Education Center and the realignment of the Capital Trail off the street and onto the parcel of property along Dock Street. This development is between mile marker 50 and 51. Expect construction to begin in the Spring and we hope to see the new alignment of the Capital Trail and completion of the center by the end of Summer 2024.“ Summer of 2024 is right around the corner, and I can’t wait to check out this new section of trail!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and today, the 16th of February, you can expect highs in the mid 70s. Seems warm, a little…too warm. In fact, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we could even get close to catching the all-time high of 78 °F (Twitter). Get out there and enjoy it today, because rain moves in tomorrow and brings with it cooler temperatures (but still not what I’d consider “winter weather”).
 

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As the General Assembly session winds down, Kim Bobo, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, has a look at three bills that “were killed (or appear dead)” and a nice reflection on public policy advocacy in Virginia. I liked this bit, which tells you why contacting your legislators is so important, even when your priorities don’t seem like they have any legislative hope at all: “Even though we may not see all the fruits of our labor this season, our work is not in vain. We are building the support and understanding on these and other issues, which is needed to advance them down the line. Next year is not an election year. The session will be longer. And we are long-distance runners, not sprinters.”
 

A while back, the Capital Region Land Conservancy bought a piece of property down by Great Shiplock Park from private owners, finally connecting some of the downriver parts of our riverfront. One of the benefits of this transaction, other than fulfilling some of the goals set out in Richmond’s Riverfront Plan, is that it allows for rerouting the Capital Trail off of horrible Dock Street and over somewhere closer to the river (and away from traffic). Cat Anthony, the executive director of the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation, has some new-to-me timing-news in their most recent email newsletter: “It has been exciting to learn more about the James River Association’s Education Center and the realignment of the Capital Trail off the street and onto the parcel of property along Dock Street. This development is between mile marker 50 and 51. Expect construction to begin in the Spring and we hope to see the new alignment of the Capital Trail and completion of the center by the end of Summer 2024.“ Summer of 2024 is right around the corner, and I can’t wait to check out this new section of trail!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 70s! Sure! You can look forward to even warmer temperatures tomorrow and then for rain to move in on Friday. I’ll wait until the end of the month to pull the data, but surely this has been a record-breakingly warm February, right?
 

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I appreciate the directness in last night’s email from RPS Superintendent Kamras: “It’s crunch time for the state budget and we need your advocacy. Here’s the very short story: the Senate version of the budget is MUCH better for RPS and school divisions across the Commonwealth. Below are the Senators and Delegates who are meeting to hash out the final budget. Please deluge them with calls and emails advocating for the Senate’s budget.” Tap through the previous link to see the entire list of folks you should contact or copy/paste this list of comma-separated email addresses directly into your email client for easy deluging. Remember, keep it short, professional, and just tell them you support the Senate’s version of the budget. Related, the RPS School Board will host their own budget work session tonight at 6:00 PM at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. There’s no public comment period on the agenda, so you can show up to observe, if you really want, or you can just stream the meeting over on RPS’s YouTube.
 

Thad Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Henrico County will consider issuing real estate tax rebates to homeowners again. I continue to think it’s smart to issue rebates while assessments continue to rise alongside the (maybe fake?) specter of recession. The alternative of lowering the real estate tax—assuming you don’t want to just pay for more things—could put a jurisdiction in a real bind should the economy start to crumble. Richmond is, of course, in a way different place: With assessments still rising but with massively greater infrastructure, maintenance, and service needs. Given all that, it’ll be interesting to see if the Mayor includes something similar in his proposed budget this year.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, but we’re on track for another warm day with highs in the 60s. Stick around, because temperatures tomorrow and Thursday could creep up into the 70s—totally normal middle-of-February stuff! While today looks dry, rain will move in before the weekend, if that impacts your plans over the next couple of days.
 

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Today is last day you can register to vote or update your existing voter information before the February 21st special congressional election. You can check your registration status on the Department of Elections website. Technically, that first sentence was a lie, because, thanks to Democrats, you can still “register after this date, through Election Day, and vote using a provisional ballot.” But, as someone with a lot of anxiety about The Rules in unfamiliar situations, I’d recommend avoiding the provisional ballot entirely if you can and just taking care of your registration business today.
 

Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports that Hustler Hollywood, the sex toy shop across from the Science Museum on Broad Street, is now open. Listen, I’m not against sex toy shops across from science museums, but surely we could do better than a small, single-story building surrounded by a parking lot fronting our biggest street! Maybe we could tear this building down (which had a previous life as a Pizza Hut), put ten stories of apartments in its place, and then open a Hustler Hollywood in the ground floor retail space?
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F now, but, later today, you’ll find highs right around 60 °F. You can expect a continuation of these unseasonably warm temperatures straight on through to at least Friday—and probably even beyond. I think our chances for a decent snow this year have started to quickly approach zero.
 

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City Council will meet today for their regularly-scheduled meeting, and you can find the full agenda here. Two of the papers I have my eyes on—expanding scooter fleets (ORD. 2023–029) and the Climate Equity Action Plan (RES. 2023-R005)—sit on the consent agenda, which usually means smooth sailing without even a chance for councilmembers to discuss or speechify. That’s good news, especially for the climate plan, because we need to just go ahead and get started on that thing. Also of note for budgetwatchers like myself, at their informal meeting, Council will have a discussion on “Council Budget Priorities Survey.” I’d love to see the results of this survey and/or hear this discussion!
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the folks behind Shyndigz, the cake place, have plans to build a hotel just down the street from their current spot. They’ll eventually move their existing location over that way and end up with a combination cake shop, courtyard, and hotel situation. Sounds great, but even more delicious is this quote about the amount of parking required for the development: “The only thing that we’re hearing so far, and we knew we would, is parking. But it was really interesting. We did a census with our staff and we found out that 65 percent of our employees either walk, ride their bike or bus to work. That surprised me and is really cool…There’s not as much need as there used to be in the past for parking.“ Turns out! Just another data point to support the City’s plan to get rid of required parking minimums for new developments!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F now, but, later today, you’ll find highs right around 60 °F. You can expect a continuation of these unseasonably warm temperatures straight on through to at least Friday—and probably even beyond. I think our chances for a decent snow this year have started to quickly approach zero.
 

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City Council will meet today for their regularly-scheduled meeting, and you can find the full agenda here. Two of the papers I have my eyes on—expanding scooter fleets (ORD. 2023–029) and the Climate Equity Action Plan (RES. 2023-R005)—sit on the consent agenda, which usually means smooth sailing without even a chance for councilmembers to discuss or speechify. That’s good news, especially for the climate plan, because we need to just go ahead and get started on that thing. Also of note for budgetwatchers like myself, at their informal meeting, Council will have a discussion on “Council Budget Priorities Survey.” I’d love to see the results of this survey and/or hear this discussion!
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the folks behind Shyndigz, the cake place, have plans to build a hotel just down the street from their current spot. They’ll eventually move their existing location over that way and end up with a combination cake shop, courtyard, and hotel situation. Sounds great, but even more delicious is this quote about the amount of parking required for the development: “The only thing that we’re hearing so far, and we knew we would, is parking. But it was really interesting. We did a census with our staff and we found out that 65 percent of our employees either walk, ride their bike or bus to work. That surprised me and is really cool…There’s not as much need as there used to be in the past for parking.“ Turns out! Just another data point to support the City’s plan to get rid of required parking minimums for new developments!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and you can, once again, expect unseasonably warm weather as we spend a lot of the afternoon in the upper 60s. Temperatures sink like a stone over the next two days, though, and the highs on Sunday will hover right around 40 °F. Winter is coming (back)!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0 (?!), 164, and 122, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 11.3. OK, clearly some data reporting issues going on here. Despite whatever the CDC website says, there is no way that Richmond has averaged zero COVID-19 cases over the last seven days. Fortunately, which seems like the wrong word here, the hospital admissions rate itself is enough to push all three localities into the medium level. I plan on continuing to treat things like we’re at a medium level, mostly by wearing a mask in large public gatherings and staying home when I’m sick. One additional piece of coronanews from this week, Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist has a nice piece about the practical impacts of President Biden ending the Public Health Emergency in May. I think, for most folks, especially those with health insurance, this change won’t be too huge of an upheaval. Unfortunately, the un- or underinsured—as always—face a lot of stressful unknowns and question marks.
 

The City of Richmond has plans for new bike lanes on either side of the Nickel Bridge, and they would like your feedback on the proposed designs. Check out the far right column of this PDF for what they’ve got drawn up for south of the bridge extending all the way to Hill Top Drive, which gets you almost down to Midlothian Turnpike. None of these designs include physical protection—like flexible posts or barriers—and the southern most section is just sharrows which doesn’t even count as infrastructure. And in this PDF (again, far right column), you can see the plans for north of the bridge all the way up and around to the end of Blanton Avenue. Again, no physical barriers proposed for any of the sections. I think y’all know what to do: Take four minutes this morning and fill out the City’s survey, and, when you do, make sure you request physically protected bike lanes as part of this project!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and you can, once again, expect unseasonably warm weather as we spend a lot of the afternoon in the upper 60s. Temperatures sink like a stone over the next two days, though, and the highs on Sunday will hover right around 40 °F. Winter is coming (back)!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0 (?!), 164, and 122, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 11.3. OK, clearly some data reporting issues going on here. Despite whatever the CDC website says, there is no way that Richmond has averaged zero COVID-19 cases over the last seven days. Fortunately, which seems like the wrong word here, the hospital admissions rate itself is enough to push all three localities into the medium level. I plan on continuing to treat things like we’re at a medium level, mostly by wearing a mask in large public gatherings and staying home when I’m sick. One additional piece of coronanews from this week, Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist has a nice piece about the practical impacts of President Biden ending the Public Health Emergency in May. I think, for most folks, especially those with health insurance, this change won’t be too huge of an upheaval. Unfortunately, the un- or underinsured—as always—face a lot of stressful unknowns and question marks.
 

The City of Richmond has plans for new bike lanes on either side of the Nickel Bridge, and they would like your feedback on the proposed designs. Check out the far right column of this PDF for what they’ve got drawn up for south of the bridge extending all the way to Hill Top Drive, which gets you almost down to Midlothian Turnpike. None of these designs include physical protection—like flexible posts or barriers—and the southern most section is just sharrows which doesn’t even count as infrastructure. And in this PDF (again, far right column), you can see the plans for north of the bridge all the way up and around to the end of Blanton Avenue. Again, no physical barriers proposed for any of the sections. I think y’all know what to do: Take four minutes this morning and fill out the City’s survey, and, when you do, make sure you request physically protected bike lanes as part of this project!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, but you can expect highs in the 70s?? I don’t know what’s going on out there, but yesterday evening was exceedingly pleasant and it looks like we’ll have an even warmer, cloudier version of that today.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has put together a nice, high-level, topic-based overview of where a bunch of legislation stands after this week’s crossover in the General Assembly. Crossover is the fun name given to when bills that made it out of the Senate head over to the House of Delegates, and bills that made it out of the House of Delegates make their way over to the Senate. If your bill didn’t cross over, it’s dead. It’s certainly not smooth sailing from here on out, of course—your bill could still die in a thousand different ways—but crossover marks a good moment to look at what legislation is actually left standing. It’s a pretty thin list, honestly, and even thinner when you filter down to stuff that has a real chance at becoming legislation, given the split in control of the House and Senate.
 

Related, Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond reports on one bill that looks destined to become a law: “a rare gun safety compromise with a bill that would give gun owners a $300 tax credit to by gun safes.” The Republican-controlled House, which, as Oliver puts it, “looked less kindly on proposals that didn’t involve cash transfers to gun owners,” passed their version of the bill 99–1.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, but you can expect highs in the 70s?? I don’t know what’s going on out there, but yesterday evening was exceedingly pleasant and it looks like we’ll have an even warmer, cloudier version of that today.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has put together a nice, high-level, topic-based overview of where a bunch of legislation stands after this week’s crossover in the General Assembly. Crossover is the fun name given to when bills that made it out of the Senate head over to the House of Delegates, and bills that made it out of the House of Delegates make their way over to the Senate. If your bill didn’t cross over, it’s dead. It’s certainly not smooth sailing from here on out, of course—your bill could still die in a thousand different ways—but crossover marks a good moment to look at what legislation is actually left standing. It’s a pretty thin list, honestly, and even thinner when you filter down to stuff that has a real chance at becoming legislation, given the split in control of the House and Senate.
 

Related, Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond reports on one bill that looks destined to become a law: “a rare gun safety compromise with a bill that would give gun owners a $300 tax credit to by gun safes.” The Republican-controlled House, which, as Oliver puts it, “looked less kindly on proposals that didn’t involve cash transfers to gun owners,” passed their version of the bill 99–1.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today we’ve got some delightfully unexpectedly highs near 70 °F alongside some bright and sunny skies. I know I’ve said this a lot recently, but if ever there was a day to get outside and have a blast, today is that day. I hope you can find the time to make it happen!
 

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RVAGreen 2050’s February newsletter is worth your time and very action oriented. Specifically: Next week, City Council will hear RES. 2023-R005, which would have them adopt RVAGreen’s Climate Equity Action Plan as the official sustainability plan for the City of Richmond. That’s something definitely worth supporting, and you should take two minutes this morning to drop your councilmember an email about it. If you’d like a sort of ground-floor summary of all the above links, check out this really clever eight-page “Council summary” document, which I think is just the best idea. If City Council can understand a document, so can you!
 

Ian M. Stewart at VPM reports on Henrico’s $320,000 takeaway from a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program (Richmond took home about $760,000 from the same grant). Tap through, scroll down, and see with your own eyes a picture of how a locality can quickly create temporary, cheap infrastructure to slow drivers down and make our streets safer. I’m not saying Henrico has it all figured out—just try taking the bus to Short Pump and then walking to your destination —but I appreciate their willingness to at least experiment with infrastructure pilot programs like the one pictured here.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, but today’s highs will almost hit 60 °F. At the moment, it looks like we’ve got a bunch of rain moving in over the weekend, so if you’ve got neighborhoods to walk, trails to ride, or other outside-stuff to get done, do it now!
 

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Every once in a while I get suckered in to reading a PolitiFact piece that reports on the validity of some claim one of our elected officials made in public. It’s nice and good journalism work—the research behind the fact-checking is always interesting—but I don’t think it does anything. First, at this moment in time, there are almost zero consequences for politicians who lie to their constituents. Second, fact-checking misspoken statistics from random committee meetings feels laughably like emptying a swimming pool with an eye dropper when you’ve got an entire political party devoted to legislating away free and fair elections. Anyway, this morning I’m glad I did read Warren Fiske from VPM’s piece about State Senator Obenshain’s claim that more Virginia children die from fentanyl than from guns. This sounds false and, turns out, is false. Fiske reports that “from the start of 2017 through September 2022…355 minors died from guns and 51 from fentanyl.” What the Senator was likely referring to is that overall, across all age groups, more people in Virginia do actually die from fentanyl than guns: “State records show 7,718 fentanyl deaths from the start of 2017 through September 2022, compared to 6,874 gun-related deaths.” I constantly underestimate (or even forget about) the magnitude of Virginia’s opioid epidemic, and that’s the real takeaway from this meandering paragraph!
 

Why did the owner of Ruby Scoops move her “New Orleans-style snowball” shop to Carytown? Here’s her quote from a piece by Jack Jacobs in Richmond BizSense: “We’re excited to be in a neighborhood with a lot of walkability.” I’m always linking to this, that, and the other thing about why Richmond should build more spaces that are safe and pleasant for people (instead of cars). But, really, people don’t need a million articles to know what kinds of spaces they want to spend time in! Folks can just tell, like in Carytown, when you get the right mix of infrastructure, land use, and zoning.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you can welcome back the warmer weather. We’ve got dry skies, highs in the mid 50s, and, deep in the extended forecast, I can even see some highs in the mid 60s! I don’t know about you, but I’m already looking forward to spending some (warmer) time outside on the bike later this week.
 

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Remember last week when the Governor’s administration had to announce that due to some careless technical difficulties, they’d shorted public schools $201 million? Turns out the issue stemmed from a broken and cryptic spreadsheet, which I think is just fascinating. Waldo Jaquith put together a short blog post describing the issue, and put up a Google Sheet version of the spreadsheet in question for those of us who can’t help but make salty comments about poorly built spreadsheets. From Jaquith, “No doubt this started as some small, simple file, many years ago, put together by somebody at the Department of Education for internal purposes, shared informally with some municipalities, but gradually shared more broadly and standardized on. And then it grew and grew, without the necessary resources provided to support it that were commensurate with its newfound importance. Surely most other state agencies are vulnerable to similar failures with similar impacts due to the same problem.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F and cloudy and that’s probably the weather for the first half of today. Later this afternoon, though, the sun will come out and lead us into a generally bright and chilly weekend. Alert! Temperatures tonight and early Saturday morning look downright cold, so make sure you drip your faucets (or whatever other sub-freezing rituals you may have)!
 

Water cooler

As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 70, 165, and 127, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 13.2. Other than a quick spike to high a couple weeks back, our region has lived on a fairly consistent plateau of medium for nearly nine months at this point. While the situation on the ground hasn’t changed much, there are a couple upcoming COVID-19 policy changes that’ll impact how we (like, our country) responds to the waning pandemic. First, President Biden announced that he’d let the COVID-19 emergency declaration expire on May 11th. This will have some administrative, funding-type impacts, and, notably, will have the costs of COVID-19 vaccinations transfer over to folks’ health insurance plans. I’m not smart enough to know all the nitty-gritty about what else will happen when the emergency declaration ends, but I’m sure we’ll see more reporting on it in the coming months. Second, the FDA voted to “harmonize” the COVID-19 vaccines so they’re all using the newer bivalent recipe. This way, even if you’re just now ready to get your first shot (or maybe you’re new to the world), you’d get a bivalent doses, protecting you against the more recent strains of the virus. I’m into this and how it simplifies both the number of available vaccines and the decisions families have to make when deciding to get vaccinated. I can’t wait for the days when we all just get our updated COVID-19 shot in the fall alongside our flu shots, and I don’t have to write an entire paragraph about it every Friday!
 

Richmond Public Schools is putting together some really great interviews with students during Black History Month that you should check out over on their Instagram. Imani Adewale, a senior from Armstrong High School who’s now a published author, and Jackson and Cassidy, members of RPS’s first Battle of the Brains team (also from Armstrong!), talk about why it’s important for them to celebrate each other during Black History Month. Young people! So inspiring! I love this type of thing and will be checking back in for the rest of the month.